SIG600,
Sure, it’s the Navy and Marine Prowlers, Hornets and Harriers that are helping out their bros on the ground with the IEDs. That’s because the AF thinks it is unglamorous and unproductive work and doesn’t want to send its airplanes and pilots to help.
Since he bad guys always lose gunfights with the good guys, they have given up on direct action engagement and are essentially fighting the war with IEDs. Even though 75% of our casualties are the result of IEDs, not AK-47s or RPGs, the AF still doesn’t like the idea of committing its assets to help the grunts find an IED before it hurts someone.
A few weeks back here in Va Beach, Gen Keys, USAF, Commander, Air Combat Command gave a keynote address at the Transformation Warfare 07 conference, sponsored by the US Naval Institute. Gen Keys stated that using UAVs and airplanes with FLIR to find IEDs is a misuse of time and AF resources.
He is not interested in having his guys on call to ground commanders to help them evaluate suspect IED sites. He said it was a junkyard on the ground and the number of false positives was too high and he didn’t think the ground guys always needed the full motion video feeds they often requested.
The General said that ACC proposes another solution to IEDs. He wants an air centric concept of deployment. He wants the AF to go after the IED network, not the device after it is buried. That means he wants to drop bombs on the bad guys' support network prior to setting the IEDs, and not help our guys find the devices after they are set. While that is a good strategy, what went unstated was that under the new COIN doctrine, that is exactly what our ground troops are tasked. Under COIN the AF has been assigned a primarily support role.
Gen. Keys comments and ideas are typical of the AF mindset. Helping grunts if they find a suspected IED site isn’t sexy because the grunt ground commander is running the show and using the AF only for support. And the AF doesn’t get to make headlines and drop bombs.